This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Gu Yichen, a 31-year-old Chinese national who lives in California. After being laid off by Google, he returned to Amazon, where he works on an H-1B visa.
His words have been edited for length and clarity.
I spent my sophomore year of high school as an exchange student in Yacolt, a small town in Washington State.
I didn’t realize that participating in the program would lead me to skip China’s entrance exam and set me on a path toward studying abroad for my bachelor’s.
I also hadn’t realized that it would eventually lead me to build a career in the US.
Getting the H-1B lottery
I majored in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
My focus was on circuit boards and chips at the time, but I was more interested in the computer side, because results were more tangible and visible.
During my junior year, I interned at Amazon. After graduating, in 2017, I started my first full-time job on that same team, while on an OPT visa.
Having a STEM degree gave me three chances to enter the H-1B lottery. I got lucky on my third try. I had to return to China to get my visa, and because of COVID, I ended up working remotely for Amazon for a year.
Laid off abruptly
I successfully applied for a job at Google in late 2022. Companies were hiring aggressively, interviews were relatively easy, and compensation packages were huge.
My manager at Amazon tried to convince me to stay, saying things were unstable and the future was uncertain. I felt that if I didn’t take the chance while I was young, I’d be less likely to do it later.
Human resources reassured us at orientation that there wouldn’t be layoffs.
My team had planned to work on an experimental project. Due to cost-cutting, it was shelved, and the entire team was let go.
I had started work around Christmas, and the layoff notice came in January 2023. I didn’t do a single day of real work. My former manager was right.
Slow life in Yunnan
I reached out to friends at Google to see if their teams had vacancies, but I couldn’t find anything.
There was also a time crunch because I was on an H-1B visa: Within a 60-day grace period, I had to find a job, get sponsorship transferred, and start working. It was tight.
I felt companies were laying people off everywhere. If I applied, I’d likely end up in a stopgap role I didn’t see myself staying in long term.
I decided to take a break instead. I went back to my hometown, Nanjing, for a while, then traveled to Yunnan province in southwestern China to stay with my aunt.
Return to the US
I’m not the type who can rest for long. I was hoping that, as a Google alum, I’d be rehired. If a position became available within six months of leaving, I wouldn’t have to go through the interview process again.
I was also still in contact with colleagues from my old team at Amazon. They told me a position had opened up.
I could continue using my previous H-1B application rather than starting from scratch. If I switched to a new team or company, I’d have to restart the application, which has become harder in recent years.
Because I returned to the same team at Amazon in Sunnyvale, California last year, recent H-1B changes under the Trump administration haven’t affected me.
I’ve applied for a green card, and once my I-140, a key approval in the process, is approved, I can renew my H-1B indefinitely. It will give me more freedom in both my personal life and my career. In the future, I might start my own business or take cooking lessons.
The work environment in the US feels like a better fit for me. As long as you get the job done, nobody cares whether you work during the day or at night. There’s no drama.
My experience at Google made me realize that while I prefer working on experimental projects, companies tend to prioritize essential teams and mature products over exploratory projects.
It also taught me that landing your ideal job is often as much about timing as effort. I became more flexible once I realized how much was outside my control.
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